IN LOVING MEMORY OF
NIA HOALONIE SMITH
SUNRISE: NOV 19, 2001
SUNSET: APR 11, 2011
100 N. Charles St., Suite 200 Baltimore, MD 21201
THANK YOU FROM SQUEEZE MGMT STAFF
Saturday, July 25 was one of Nia Smith's good days. The 7-year-old Columbia girl, who has sickle cell anemia, wasn't suffering from pain in her back or legs or running a dangerously high fever. Instead she was brimming with energy, running and giggling, playing and working on a warm summer day with other children in her neighborhood.
Nia was selling lemonade and cookies to raise donations for (Nia Smith's Lemonade Stand,) to support sickle cell research. It was part of a fund raising drive that Nia and her family hope will raise $10,000 for sickle cell research and for families with chronically ill children. The funds will be managed byJohns Hopkins Hospital, where Nia receives her care.
"We didn't want this money to support only sickle cell research, we wanted this to be for families, too,"Avis Miner, Nia's grandmother, said. Miner helped organize the lemonade stand, but said it was Nia's idea. "We only planned this five days ago when Nia was asking me why her disease didn't have a cure," Miner said. "I explained to her that you needed money to research for a cure and that's how we decided to do this. "Nia was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia when she was 12 months old.
Sickle cell is an inherited blood disease that affects the red blood cells, causing them to become sickle-shaped and making it difficult for them to move through small blood vessels. The cells clump together and block blood vessels that lead to the limbs and organs, causing pain, serious infections and organ damage. People who have sickle cell anemia are born with it. They inherit two copies of the sickle cell gene -- one from each parent. The disease does not have a cure.
On the day of the lemonade sale, Nia, dressed for the occasion in a lemon-slice printed blouse, was surrounded by her grandmother and grandfather, two aunts and various other family members, not to mention a handful of neighborhood friends all between the ages of 2 and 9. Signs posted along Winter Rose Path, in Columbia, read: "Support Sickle Cell Research, 50 cents for lemonade, cookie free with donation." "We squeezed lemonade all night long. It's really homemade," said Nia, who will be a second-grader at Cradle rock School in the fall.
In between customers, the children sat in a circle, anxiously waiting for their turn to be "goose" in a spirited game of "duck-duck-goose. " But when a customer approached the table, they jumped up from their seats to collect the donation in a shoe box and serve up the homemade lemonade. One neighborhood customer even returned to the stand with a second donation. "I wanted the young ladies to be successful," explained Pete Chadwick, who lives nearby. He contributed an additional $10.
Among the other customers were the local mailman, Nia's clinicians and other families affected by the sickle cell disease, more than $260 during the three-hour lemonade sale, Miner said, and the family will continue to collect donations until they reach their goal of $10,000. The ambitious young Nia already has another fund raising event lined up. "Nia told me that she wants to hold a kids art auction," Miner said. "The theme is going to be 'It's a Wonderful Life."
For further research on the affects of this inherited disease, please click the following links below.
